Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Submitted by Fiona Beal If you had told me several years back that the time would come when teachers around the world could share ideas in a group verbally, visually and virtually right from the comfort of their own homes, I would probably have laughed (to myself). But the day HAS come! I experienced it myself on Saturday 17th December. Bart Verswijvel from Belgium, one of the organisers of this International TeachMeet said, prior to the occasion, “On Saturday I will have more than 25 visitors coming to my house (virtually). The visitors come from 15 different countries and they are from the 5 continents of the world. They are all teachers and they have a great story to tell. Doesn’t this sound amazing?” As it turned out there were actually 60 attendees, including 22 presenters from 15 countries and 5 continents.

I also created a TeachMeet – South Africa wiki (http://teachmeet-southafrica.wikispaces.com/) earlier this year for anyone in South Africa to use if they organise a TeachMeet. This is a way of possibly keeping a record of our Teachmeets in South Africa,

Organisers and Presenters of the virtual International TeachMeet

However, this is the first virtual International Teachmeet that I know of. It was organised by two of my Partners in Learning Institute (Seattle, July) colleagues, namely Arjana (@abfromz) from Croatia and Bart(@BartVerswijvel)from Belgium. Microsoft's Partners in Learning, Croatia, have kindly sponsored the use of Microsoft Live meeting to host this and further International TeachMeets.

Next one? Of course there will be more, possibly in February 2012. The next event to follow in this line is the first International Student TeachMeet that Bart is setting up for 7 February 2012. Details can be found here: http://studentsmeet.org/

To conclude, I personally think that the benefits of using technology in education will be widely spread through the the TeachMeet concept. I love Teachmeets!

I have recently been exploring several different ways of putting video on to a blog or wiki; and when a friend asked me for some ideas on how to do this I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to summarise what I have tried up to now and what I plan to try in the future and use it as a blog post! So here goes...

1. SHORT VIDEOS

This is something I learned through someone else – isn’t it amazing how we learn from one another all the time! In Blogger and Edublogs you can easily add video if it is not too big in size. The problem comes in how your video camera saves files. The files (I think) need to be .wmv to be uploaded. This is where YouTube Downloader comes in handy.

Use YouTube Downloader to convert files

This is a free downloadable programme that can convert movies to different formats. You need to select the second option 'Convert video (previously downloaded) from file'. It works with any video. However Edublogs and Blogger show these videos differently as I will show you now.

Showing videos in Edublogs and Blogger

a) Edublogs: Last year the Grade 3s used Photostory 3 (with narration) to make videos about Fish Hoek. This is how Edublogs shows the video: Fish Hoek (Edublogs says about their video approach, "It doesn’t embed your file in an actual video or audio player in your post; it only inserts a link to the file. When readers click on the link it opens another page where the audio file is played or it downloads the video onto their computer").

b) Blogger: This is how Blogger shows the same video. It actually embeds the video.

With Animoto you are only allowed short videos of 30 seconds free but there is an Animoto Educators account which I have applied for and received. This entitles me to myself and 50 of my students having the Plus account in which we can upload full length videos (maximum 200MB). Last year one of the Grade 5 classes participated in the ‘Monster project’ and many of the teachers around the world used Animoto to show everyone where they were at. Here is a sample from a Grade 2 class (Miss Hariju) in the USA:

2. SCHOOL TUBE VIDEOS

I must say that I love School Tube and it is my first choice since it is all about school! I learned about it from another of my PLN friends from America, Bob Greenwood, with whom I was involved in a project. He teaches Grade 2 and he has his own channel on School Tube. He makes so many amazing videos. Take a look: http://www1.schooltube.com/Organization/OrganizationHome.aspx?oid=129695

So that is what I did. I applied to become a moderator on School Tube and I was given a school channel. Any movie uploaded there gives me an embedding code and I put the code in my blogs and in my wikis. Our 2011 Adobe Youth Voices project is uploaded there.

I also like using YouTube and I have a channel there as well for all my school videos. Once you have posted a video it gives you a code which you can embed into any blog or wiki. This makes it very easy. Often with school videos I make them private so that they can only be seen by whoever has the YouTube address link. When we were on a video swap project with Denmark (Grade 6) we used YouTube’s private code for this. I sometimes think that parents will be happier with the use of School Tube because it is mainly for teachers. I believe there is now a YouTube ‘Teacher Tube’ channel which is an even better option.

4. FOR THE FUTURE

I would like to try out video sites recommended in blogposts:
a) Vimeo

My BIG question at the moment is - how do you compress large .avi files of say 1.8GB in order to upload them easily? (Later...okay, I have just found the answer to this. You put the whole .avi file into Windows Movie Maker and it reduces it amazingly with little loss of quality. It really works...yay!)

5. A GREAT PUBLICATION ON MAKING VIDEOS FROM RICHARD BYRNE

I love Richard Byrne’s site called Free Technology for Teachers. One of the books he so freely shared is about making videos on the web. He allows others to embed his documents so I am going to embed the video book here.

Sunday, 11 December 2011

IEARN has some interesting new projects for you to consider. If I can urge you to do one thing in 2012 it is to get your class involved in global projects. It is really worth it and will be really exciting for your learners.

Thursday, 1 December 2011

Our world is definitely becoming a global village! It is so much easier to connect with classes around the world in our technological age than ever before. It is really worth finding a global project to involve your class in. If you are looking for ways to connect with others here are a few ideas of places to start.

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